A Memory Between Us (10 page)
Confusion overwhelmed the hurt and fear on her face. Good. Now to make her smile.
“Say, you think they’d take me in the Army Nurse Corps so we can work together? Wonder if those white dresses come in my size. Hmm. Guess I’ll have to shave my legs.” He hiked up one trouser leg and whistled. “That’ll take a few days.”
Ruth’s mouth contorted, not quite a smile.
“Could you loan me a lipstick?”
“With—with your mustache? I can’t—imagine.” Ruth let out a flimsy bubble of a laugh. “You’re crazy, Jack Novak.”
He grinned. Out of the flak zone. Now to get back en route to the target. He gestured to the book in her hand. “What did you buy?”
Ruth uncrossed her arms and glanced at the book. “It’s for my sister Anne. Her birthday’s in September.”
“You never miss a birthday, do you? They’d better return the favor.”
“They’d better not,” she said with a shaky smile. “It’s my money.”
Jack settled back against the wall and crossed his ankles. “When was the last time you got a gift?”
“Me?” Her eyes widened. “I don’t know. High school graduation, I guess. My parents gave me a Bible.”
Jack stared at her. How long had that been? Five years? Six? But she didn’t have anyone to treat her, and she sure didn’t treat herself. No nail polish or jewelry, not even a wristwatch. “When’s your birthday?”
“Jack …” She glared at him, but he glared even harder until she broke away and sighed. “It’s—it’s August 3.”
“Tomorrow?” He laughed good and hard, especially when he spotted the jeweler’s sign overhead. “That settles it. I’ll get you a watch as combination birthday present and guilt offering.”
“A watch?” Ruth’s jaw flopped open. “Jack, no. That’s too expensive.”
“You know how much I make? I don’t have a family to support, not even a bad habit to support, and you need a watch.”
“No, I don’t.” She clamped her hand over her wrist, the left one.
“Yeah, you do. How are you going to check pulses on a cargo plane? No clocks on those walls. Ever thought of that, Miss Flight Nurse?”
She blinked and frowned.
Jack held open the door to the shop. “You can stay out here, but if you want any say in the matter, you’d better come along.”
Ruth groaned and headed into the store. “I wish I’d never met you.”
Somehow he didn’t believe her.
At the counter the jeweler displayed the limited selection of ladies’ watches. Jack ruled out the cheapest, Ruth ruled out the fanciest, and they decided on a simple gold watch with a reddish brown strap, which Jack liked because it matched Ruth’s hair.
After Jack paid, the jeweler held out the watch to Ruth, but Jack intercepted it. He buckled the strap around Ruth’s slender wrist and let his fingers brush her skin. “There. Do you like it?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She looked at her arm on the counter. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” A jagged scar curved around the watch face. He ran his finger over the scar. “How’d this happen?”
Ruth drew back her arm and tugged down the sleeve of her uniform jacket. “A long time ago.”
She hadn’t answered his question and she wouldn’t. Oh yeah, Ruth Doherty was an intriguing little challenge.
When they stepped back outside, Jack nudged Ruth with his elbow. “What’s your next errand?”
“Oh, no more errands. I was …” Her face went blank, and her eyes skittered about.
Fishing for an excuse. “Okay, what were you going to do before a thoughtless, bumbling pilot crashed into your day?”
One corner of her mouth crept up. “At least you’re an honest, bumbling pilot.”
“I’m a lousy liar. Always made my little brother lie for me. So what are your plans? And you’re no good at lying either, so don’t try.”
“Well, I was—I had a quarter left over last month, so I thought I’d see a movie. Maybe.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Jack …” There was that fire he loved.
He spread his arms wide. “What do you want me to do? If I go along, you’ll think I’m finagling a date, but if I don’t, I’ll break my promise and abandon you. I have to wait around for you anyway, because I’m not about to let you go home by yourself. Might as well watch the movie.”
The fire dimmed, but embers still flared.
“I’ll sit on the far side of the theater,” he said. “You won’t even—”
“Oh brother. You can come, as long as I pay my way. Bad enough I let you buy me jewelry.”
“Not jewelry—medical equipment.” Nevertheless, Jack was pleased she saw the watch as the personal gift he intended.
The theater was almost empty, and they found seats center back. The men from the 94th preferred the first-run Hollywood movies shown on base, and in town they favored the pubs.
Ruth’s laughter during the cartoons encouraged Jack, as did the newsreel showing the Allies’ rapid advance across Sicily. Now that Italy’s king had imprisoned Mussolini, GIs would soon storm over the Alps into Germany. With the Soviet drive west after the Battle of Kursk, and the American and Australian gains in New Guinea and the Solomons, the prospect of victory surged in Jack’s veins.
However, the film, some song-and-dance B movie, grated on his nerves. When the hero sang about the moon, Jack whispered in Ruth’s ear, “Betcha he’ll rhyme it with June.”
Ruth laughed softly. “You know what they say: moon, June, spoon.”
“No imagination. What about tune, soon?”
Ruth’s smile was visible even in the darkened theater. “Harpoon.”
“Now that’s more like it.” For a moment he played with lyrics, and then he leaned as close to Ruth as he dared and sang, “We stood beneath a moon in June. You skewered me with a harpoon. Then I got drunk in the saloon.”
Ruth covered her mouth and her laugh. “I can’t stand people who talk in movies.”
“I can’t stand you, either.”
When she finished laughing, she uncovered her smile. “You goon.”
“Loon.” Jack savored the sound of their combined laughter. Eventually Ruth sighed and leaned back in her seat.
Jack rested his ankle on his knee. Maybe some of the day’s damage had been repaired. He thought of another rhyme and turned to her, but at the same time she leaned closer, and before he could pull back, his lips brushed her ear.
Swell, now he really blew it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Just wanted to say something.”
“No. No, I’m sorry. I—I wanted to say something too. You go first.”
Jack tried to read her expression in the gray light. The warmth on his lips was so sweet and fleeting, he wanted to kiss her for real.
“Jack?” she whispered. “What was it?”
He swallowed hard to clear his throat and his mind. “Raccoon.”
“Raccoon?” Relief colored her laugh. “Don’t start that nonsense again.”
Good. She realized it was an accident. “What did you want to say?”
Ruth rested back in her seat. “Nothing, really. I—well, why do people in love lose their heads?” She nodded at the screen, where two lovers waltzed in bliss.
What an interesting question. “That’s part of the fun. You can’t take your eyes off each other, you have your own private language.” Jack frowned at the screen. Why was she asking? Hadn’t she ever … ?
He turned to her. “You’ve never been in love, have you?”
She shook her head, gaze fixed forward. “I bet you have, plenty of times.” Her voice was too light, too high.
Very interesting. “A few times, but no one I should have married. And the girl I should have married—I couldn’t manage to fall in love with her.”
Finally Ruth faced him. “What do you mean?”
Jack slid nearer, under the pretense of keeping his voice low. “Alice was the daughter of one of my seminary professors. She was sweet on me. I dated her partly so I could pass Apologetics.”
“You’re awful.”
“I know. And she was the ideal pastor’s wife. Pretty, sweet, played the organ. But she had no fire in her. None. The Air Corps was my escape. Alice wanted me to take a church, said I was disobedient for joining up. She broke up with me and saved me the bother.”
“Hmm.”
He studied the curves of her forehead, nose, lips, chin, and how the contours changed as she thought. Did she realize Jack needed a woman with both character and fire? And she needed him too. He knew it.
Ruth shifted in her seat. “So it’s against God’s will for you to fly?”
“Well, no. There’s a war on. But when the war’s over …”
“You don’t want to be a pastor, do you?”
Jack stared at the woman who had voiced what he never dared to think. With a groan he sank back in his seat. How had the subject changed from love? “It doesn’t matter what I want, only what God wants.”
“God wants you to be a pastor?” Ruth’s eyes glowed in the light from the film. “You were called?”
Called? Dad talked about it, Ray talked about it, but what about him? Was he called? He shoved off the niggling thought. “Of course God wants me to be a pastor. I’m like my dad in every way. His namesake, the pastor—heard it all my life. Besides, I do want to serve the Lord.” He held his forefinger to his lips. “Now hush. People who talk in movies—boy, I tell you.”
Ruth smiled and faced forward.
Jack leaned on the armrest away from her. What was going on? He was supposed to shake up her world, not the other way around.
Bury St. Edmunds
Monday, August 16, 1943
“I’m so glad you came with me, May.”
On the bus seat next to Ruth, May Jensen laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say those words.”
“Neither did I, but I am glad. I wanted to go into town today, but I promised Jack I wouldn’t go alone, and then he didn’t show by noon—he must be on a mission and—”
“I know.” May glanced at Ruth’s hands and smiled.
Ruth was stroking the leather of her watch strap again. May had noticed the watch immediately and figured out where it came from, to Ruth’s dismay. She drew a deep breath to say what she needed to. “It’ll also be fun to spend the afternoon with you.” And necessary. She needed to write over the memories she’d replayed too often the past two weeks.
May’s thin eyebrows elevated. “Orphans’ day out?” Ruth laughed. “Shall we go begging? Spare a tuppence, sir?”
The ladies stepped off the bus and headed down the hill, past two-storied houses standing shoulder to shoulder, neat and clean under black slate roofs. Ruth tipped her face to the warm blue sky laced with white tendrils. “A perfect day to fly.”
“We spend too much time with Charlie and Jack.”
“Perhaps.” But the last few months were the best Ruth could remember. However, the war pressed on, and Jack was up in combat, possibly under fire while she walked in the sunshine.
Lord, please keep him safe.
“I wonder how the mission’s going.” May’s face mirrored Ruth’s concern.
“Far too much time with them.”
May groaned. “I can’t believe this. I promised myself I wouldn’t fall for one of the men, but Charlie—I can’t help it. And you—you were more adamant about not dating than I was, and look at you.”
Ruth’s chest tightened. “I’m not dating Jack.”
“And I’m not dating Charlie. We might as well, given how we feel.”
At the moment, Ruth’s mouth was the driest spot in England. She had to distract May. “Will you accept if Charlie asks you out again?”
“No.” Wrinkles creased May’s white forehead. “Oh, Ruth, his job is so dangerous, much more than Thomas’s. I can’t go through that again.”
“I know.” Ruth slipped her arm through May’s. Their heels clicked in unison on the flagstone sidewalk.
May raised a wobbly smile. “What are the plans, oh great leader?”
How wonderful to have a friend—someone to lift her spirits, someone whose spirits also needed a lift. “Well, we’re two happy-go-lucky women out on the town.” Ruth flung out her arm and kicked her leg as high as her uniform skirt allowed. “Let’s see a movie and weep during the funny parts and giggle during the sad parts.”
May grabbed Ruth’s hand and swung it back and forth. “Then we can dance through the streets and toss Hershey bars to the children.”
“Smashing. Then we’ll go to the center of town and play London Bridge until the MPs cart us home.” Ruth ducked under their raised arms and twirled behind them to face—
“Jack!” she gasped. “Charlie!”
“Ladies.” Jack’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
A pencil dangled from Charlie’s mouth. “So this is what women do when men aren’t around.”
May dropped a curtsey. “We dance
because
men aren’t around.”
Ruth laughed and readjusted her cap. “What are you doing here? I heard planes this morning and assumed you had a mission.”
“We did,” Jack said. “We’re done. Early mission, short mission, easy mission.”
“Dropped half our bombs on one airfield, half on another.” The pencil jumped as Charlie talked. “Never done that before. Two targets on one trip. Boy, was that fun.”
Jack stuffed his hands in the pockets of his flight jacket. “Now we’re here. I can keep my promise.”
Ruth never knew her heart fit in her esophagus, but apparently it did.
“And you.” Charlie pulled the pencil from his mouth and pointed it at May. “You made me give up my smokes, and now I snap pencils by the bushel. Come on. We’re shopping for pencils.”
May’s jaw fell open, and she looked at Ruth.
“Pencils?” Jack said. “I don’t want to shop for pencils. Do you, Ruth?”
“Well, I—”
“Course not. Go on, you two.” Jack tossed Charlie a coin. “Get me some ink while you’re at it.”
“Over and out.” Charlie took May’s arm and hauled her down the hill, while May shot Ruth a confused glance over her shoulder.
Ruth reeled from the change in plans and from Jack’s warmth hovering behind her. “Pencils?”
“Stupid, huh? But he pulled it off.”
So did Jack. She turned to face him. “You two are the sneakiest—”
“May didn’t protest.” Jack nodded toward the town center. “As for you, my friend, I believe the day’s plans involve movies, dancing, and London Bridge.”
“Oh no. Not with you.” Ruth strolled down the sidewalk. “Now I have a yearning for one of those fussy porcelain figurines. Could take hours to find the right one.”